The ones working on it consider it an urgent moral crisis and only the announcement of their progress has kept calls for... Intervention... Down. If there is to be trouble, this is not a good subject of it when it can be avoided to both our benefit. But we have been over this. Her tail waves uncertainly. I will see about the visitors.

"Thank you!"

Ice flies off.

Engineers and curious onlookers show up of their own accord, no effort required on her part! Disproportionately many of the engineers are Ruby or Onyx. They're all carrying various devices, mostly for the purpose of showing off. This lot gawks at the shuttles and asks a lot of questions about computers! That trio is assembling a breath-powered electrical generator apparently to prove they can! Those ones want to show off or ramble about their sonic mining tools and railguns and a glass sphere that can project 3-D images and samples of weird alloys and musical instruments and a set of magnetic cubes that are totally not just toys because he'll find a use for them eventually and a prototype telepathy recording device and an astrogation tool and crystal growing setups and this thing that makes you have specific kinds of dreams, and so on!

The remainder have Lots Of Excited Questions about architecture and subways. They seem to be the building project contingent.

The Amentans are delighted to film all the showoffs and promise them a billion people will see it once they take the footage home. Does the dream thing work on Amentans or is it only for people with magic dreams? They brought a surveyor and an architect to figure out how to build here if they're eventually invited to, and this blue used to do city planning before switching over and knows about subways!

The Dream Rod's inventor tried it on a bunch of animals and they woke up really confused, but those were fairly dumb herbivores, so she's not sure. It probably won't do any long term harm, the porcupine-things took the longest to recover and they were fine by noon.

We're interested in building something small for now, cooperatively, something to accommodate a few hundred Amentans at a time, maybe as many as a thousand.

Two greens want to try the dream thing!

"Where do you want it?" asks the surveyor.

They can try it! Which of the Four would they like it set to? ...They need to be asleep to do that of course.

The leader gestures widely. Somewhere in the Mootlands. A few places we would veto but otherwise... Not right next to our own structures, but a mile off is sufficient distance.

This one wants to try Air and that one wants to try Earth!

The surveyor and architect tromp out and find a spot they like. Is this spot okay?

They'll have to agree on one or take turns. Can Amentans fall asleep at will?

Well this patch of shrubs is in the way, but they're not actually very important and there's plenty of similar ones over there, it's not near a game trail or a stream that would need to be diverted, hmm yes this place works. What's their first idea for what the place would look like?

They're willing to both try Earth. And not really, no.

The architect has a concept sketch ready! Little mixed use tower over here, water circulator here, generator here.

...Well, they need to be asleep and within about ten feet of it for it to work.

The Draak want everything to be pretty and evoke natural shapes and not disrupt the landscape much, and have lots of ideas. Most of it being underground with a few small buildings popping up into a park here and there? Greenery all over the tower walls and a big wire-and-strut canopy with more plants, stretching out of the roof, like a tree? A big curvy tiered structure shaped so it almost looks like a hill instead of a building? Adding rock and soil and vegetation over three sides and the roofs of lower, longer buildings so it looks like they carved out places from geologically inexplicable scarps and canyons?

They can go to sleep near it, it'll just have to be about when they were already going to go to sleep and not right now.

Putting stuff underground is possible but complicates ventilation a lot. Smothering the structures in plants works much better, though it might be high maintenance, and the curvy tiers could work too!

The Draak have all sorts of plant-maintenance-lowering ideas. They discuss it a bit and decide that they particularly like this new idea: A few smaller mixed-use buildings, each with a couple levels of sub-basements and the above-ground portions smothered in rock, soil, and native vegetation to make them look like natural landforms wherever there aren't doors or windows. This has the added benefit of natural thermal insulation! They sketch some outlines in the dirt. They could probably run a power line from the nuclear fusion generator that's inside the mountain and just use a transformer and have emergency generators just in case instead of a full power station.

That works! They weren't sure they should expect power infrastructure. How's "nuclear fusion" work?

It's the same sort of thing stars do! The phrase 'bottled star' is very aesthetic to these Draak. Any further details are probably secret, at least for right now, since they can always explain later but they can't un-tell knowledge unless they kill everyone here.

...let's avoid killing people. That would be a hell of a diplomatic incident. But if they don't understand the infrastructure they might still patch in, but can't rely on it.

...It would? Things die all the time. Anyway. It's been operating (mostly) continuously for almost a season and nothing awful has happened yet. How are you going to make electricity if you don't want ours?

Amentans mostly die of old age and very rarely of murder. Murder is a really serious crime. Everyone would be very upset if the Draak started murdering people they invited onto their planet.

They were thinking of having a garbage incinerator in there to pull double duty, and they have this smoke-trapping system to protect the air quality. They can also capture some energy from wastewater flow like so, though that doesn't make up for having to pump it in the first place.

It's not really murder if it's a duel or if they stole things from you or if the Senate says to do it. Oh yeah! No garbage. Everything has to get hauled back to Amenta or disposed of in a Draak-approved way - burning unwanted things to ash is a classic and good way to do this, and filters are a good idea if you're going to do a lot of that.

Would anyone like to try these alien fruits? Local creatures of all kinds like them!

On Amenta it's still murder in all those cases unless the Senate is authorized to order executions and you're the sort of person who does executions.

This one green wants to try a fruit and see if he dies! If he doesn't then more people will try more fruits.

Well, they're not on Amenta. But nobody has plans to kill anybody as far as they know and if some Draak tries it anyway everyone else will probably 'execute' them at the order of Skyclaw over there - she's designated as a leader of the militia. How's that?

The fruit in question is pretty weird. Tough and pulpy, both sweet and sour like raspberries or strawberries, except it's really not either of those flavors. Nothing horrible happens immediately.

That's probably good enough but just so they all know if Amentans get killed and Draak are all "meh" about it the other Amentans will take that WAY more seriously than they might expect.

"I like the flavor but the texture isn't very... fruity. I bet the juice would be good in a panna cotta or whatever though."

"Ooh, if we can eat these plants we need to bring seeds."

There's so many of them and yet they're so defensive- The leader clacks his teeth and suggests that how about these prospective architect-Draak go back to talking about architecture, hmm? The Amentans can pay for excavation and the Draak labor that will be involved in setting things up to look natural once the buildings are up by letting them watch and explaining construction techniques. There won't be any actual building in this visit probably, though, things have to be properly planned first right?

The Draak have no objection to anyone collecting seeds. One of them wonders if drinking juice is like drinking blood.

They go back to talking about architecture. They didn't bring all the stuff they'd need because they don't have a plan finalized that they could have a complete inventory planned out, but they can make another trip.

The Amentans do not drink blood but suspect it is probably different. Blood clots, once it's out of the animal, and juice doesn't do that out of its fruit.

Blood is not really very tasty and much worse if it's not fresh, yes. Nobody goes to the trouble of preserving it. One comments that she collects blood to feed a certain insect that eats it, so that she can then eat a certain bird that prefers to eat that specific insect.

Here's another fruit! Or did the risk-taking green want to wait longer, for any possible effects of the first one to be obvious?